7 Galactic North by Alastair Reynolds

Author:Alastair Reynolds [Reynolds, Alastair]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Science fiction; English, Technology and civilization
ISBN: 9780575079106
Publisher: Gollancz
Published: 2006-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

"What is it you want to know?"

"We Slugs are among the few intelligent, starfaring cultures in this part of the Galaxy. During the War against Intelligence we avoided the Inhibitors by hiding ourselves among the mindless Nestbuilders."

Irravel nodded. Slugs were one of the few alien species known to humanity who would even acknowledge the existence of the feared Inhibitors. Like humanity, they'd fought and beaten the revenants -- at least for now.

"It is the weaponry you seek which enabled us to triumph -- but even then only at colossal cost to our phylum. Now we are watchful for new threats."

"I don't see where this is leading."

"We have heard rumours. Since you have come from the direction of those rumours -- the local stellar neighbourhood around your phylum's birth star -- we imagined you might have information of value."

Irravel exchanged a sideways glance with Mirsky. The old woman's wizened, age-spotted skull looked as fragile as paper, but she remained an unrivalled tactician. They knew each other so well now that Mirsky could impart advice with the subtlest of movements; expression barely troubling the lined mask of her face.

"What kind of information were you seeking?"

"Information about something that frightens us." The Nestbuilder's pigmentation flickered again, forming an image of -- something. It was a splinter of grey-brown against speckled blackness --perhaps the Nestbuilder's attempt at visualizing a planetoid. And then something erupted across the surface of the world, racing from end to end like a film of verdigris. Where it had passed, fissures opened up, deepening until they were black fractures, as if the world were a calving iceberg. And then it blew apart, shattering into a thousand green-tinged fragments.

"What was that?" Irravel said.

"We were rather hoping you could tell us." The Nestbuilder's pigmentation refreshed again, and this time what they were seeing was clearly a star, veiled in a toroidal belt of golden dust.

"Machines have dismantled every rocky object in the system where these images were captured; Ross 128, which lies within eleven light-years of your birth star. They have engendered a swarm of trillions of rocks on independent orbits. Each rock is sheathed in a pressurized bubble membrane, within which an artificial plant-based ecosystem has been created. The same machines have fashioned other sources of raw material into mirrors, larger than worlds themselves, which trap sunlight above and below the ecliptic and focus it onto the swarm."

"And why does this frighten you?"

The Nestbuilder leant closer in its column of microgravity. "Because we saw it being resisted. As if these machines had never been intended to wreak such transformations. As if your phylum had created something it could not control."

"And -- these attempts at resistance?"

"Failed."

"But if one system was accidentally transformed, it doesn't mean..." Irravel trailed off. "You're worried about them crossing interstellar space, to other systems. Even if that happened -- couldn't you resist the spread? This can only be human technology -- nothing that would pose any threat to yourselves."

"Perhaps it was once human technology, with programmed limitations to prevent it replicating uncontrollably.

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